The present invention relates to a page entering apparatus for an electrophotographic copying machine.
There is known an electrophotographic copying machine capable of entering page data in copying paper, as disclosed by, for example, Japanese laid open patent publication No. 106224/1979, No. 202479/1984 or No. 148939/1987. In such an electrophotographic copying machine, a page number is generally displayed on a liquid crystal display, an electro-chromic display or the like disposed at the tip or the like of the document placing surface, and the page number thus displayed is copied together with the original document.
According to the conventional page entry, a page number is merely entered in a numerical order "1", "2", "3" . . . each time the document is renewed.
There is known an electrophotographic copying machine on which mounted is an automatic document feeder (ADF) (including the type of circulating documents and the type of not circulating the documents; The former type will be hereinafter referred to as a recirculating document handler (RDH)). In such a copying machine, there are instances where page numbers are to be entered in copy paper sheets while the documents are automatically fed by the ADF. In such a case, in a copying machine of the type in which a plurality of documents set on the ADF are fed one by one, to the document placing surface, starting from the last-page document, the page numbers cannot be entered in copy paper sheets unless the total number of the set documents is previously set. Accordingly, the operator should manually count the total number of documents and enter such data through keys before starting the copying oepration. It takes a great deal of trouble in view of maneuverability.
Even in a copying machine of the type in which a plurality of documents set on the ADF are fed one by one, starting from the first-page document, the page numbers cannot normally be entered in such manner as to represent the relationship with respect to the total number of the documents, i.e., page numbers in the form of "1/n", "2/n", "3/n" and so forth cannot be entered in copying paper sheets, where n is the total number of documents.